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Obama stopped the falling house prices (in Washington DC)
Howard Richman, 4/25/2012

Republicans do not give President Obama credit where credit is due. He stopped the fall off in house prices. When he took office in January 2009, house prices were falling rapidly. Both in Washington DC and in the nation they were 81% of what they had been just one year previously (after subtracting for inflation).

But President Obama almost completely halted that decline. In Washington DC, according to the Feb 2012 data released yesterday by S&P/Case-Shiller, house prices still held 96% of their January 2009 value. His success is shown in the following graph of real house prices (house prices after subtracting for inflation):

President Obama stopped the fall of house prices in Washington DC by growing government as a primary source of income. The additional federal workers that he employed only partially account for his success. He also grew the amount that could be earned by lobbyists in Washington's "pay-to-play" system. Some call it "corruption." Gov. Sarah Palin calls it "crony capitalism." I call it "success."

The rest of the nation didn't do as well as Washington. In February 2012, as shown on the graph, houses in the country as a whole (as measured by a composite of 10 cities) fell to 87% of their January 2009 value. In 2011, alone, they lost 6.2% of their real value.